USF art and dance students recently stepped out of the recital hall and into county jail, where they put social change art theory into practice with inmates and soon found themselves breaking down cultural biases in surprising ways.

A new Thacher Gallery exhibit dives into the exodus of African-Americans from San Francisco over the past 20 years and the migration’s long-lasting effects on art, community, and perceptions of “home.”

USF’s Jeanine Cotter JD ’93 is the CEO and co-founder of San Francisco’s largest solar installation firm and a national leader in the green economy, having taken part in a recent White House summit on alternative energy. She attributes her success to principles she learned at USF and to running a business that focuses on improving the environment and supporting the local community as much as making a profit.

Members of the USF community gathered at Gleeson Plaza on Friday to remember three University of North Carolina students who were killed Feb. 10 at their off-campus Chapel Hill apartment — a crime that some Muslim leaders suggest reflects a tide of anti-Muslim sentiment in the country.

Alicia Garza, who co-founded the #BlackLivesMatter movement, will be on campus Feb. 24 for a day-long teach-in to raise awareness about prejudice, privilege, and persecution in the wake of national protests alleging widespread police violence against African-Americans.

Four USF professors have been named College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Scholars for 2014. This year’s award honors outstanding publications and research on matters as varied as the role of religion in immigrants’ lives, previously undiscovered molecular species, fictional short stories about broken hearts, and the roots of international conflict in Africa.

The University of San Francisco has named the Chronicle Season of Sharing Fund this year’s recipient of the USF California Prize for Service and the Common Good. The nonprofit was selected for its commitment to assisting Bay Area families facing financial crisis.

Community and government leaders came together at the USF School of Law Jan. 20 for “Beyond the Protests,” a panel discussion on how to improve police and community interactions in the wake of controversies surrounding the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner and the lack of indictments against police officers involved in those incidents.

With protest marches against alleged police brutality planned for Martin Luther King Jr. Day in major cities across the country, civil rights icon and USF Visiting Professor Clarence B. Jones believes the United States is living through a watershed period.

Montray Clemons ’16 is still smiling about what happened weeks ago when the Dons forward led basketball drills for a group of typical- and special-needs kids at USF’s War Memorial Gymnasium. Every few minutes one of the kids would light up like an incandescent bulb, their eyes beaming because they’d just learned to dribble between their legs or shoot a basket.

The USF community joined St. Ignatius Church parishioners and San Francisco residents on Nov. 16 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the killing of five Jesuit priests in El Salvador. The priests were murdered in a violent raid at their residence in 1989, for standing in solidarity with the Salvadoran people and opposing the country’s military dictatorship.

For Alexandra Morgan MNA ’00, the fight against cancer is personal. It played a pivotal role in her decision to become CEO of Family House — a San Francisco nonprofit that cares for children stricken by the disease.

As the San Francisco Giants chase their third World Series championship
in five years, the team’s fan base is at an all-time high. But it’s more than
stellar baseball that makes the team the darling of Fog City; it’s their
support of causes that are near and dear to San Franciscan’s hearts.

Frank Turner, S.J., a leading international advocate on issues of poverty, social deprivation, climate change, and foreign policy, has been named USF’s new Anna and Joseph Lo Schiavo Chair in Catholic Social Thought.

Katie Finch ’14, a participant in this spring’s Criminal and Juvenile Justice Law Clinic, recently won a case for her client thanks to her dogged investigation skills. The charges against her client were dismissed moments before the courtroom trial was about to begin, and Finch’s investigation also led to another defendant’s acquittal in a related case.

Mallory Browne ’13 could have landed a cushy corporate job after graduating as a standout USF business-marketing student. Instead, she saw a chance to make a difference and help save lives working for an international nonprofit that leads HIV/AIDS care and research in 28 countries around the world.

When USF graduate researchers landed in Guatemala to investigate whether fair trade coffee was benefiting local coffee growers, they never imagined the experience would be turned into a novel about the country’s tug of war between rich and poor, its colonial past, and coffee marketers’ efforts to win international consumers’ hearts and minds.

USF’s Barbara Sattler is at the forefront of a growing national movement to shine a public light on the controversial method of hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, and its adverse health risks.

USF’s Mary Wardell-Ghirarduzzi has been named a San Francisco Human Rights Commission Hero Award winner. The award comes on the heels of a separate honor: Mayor Ed Lee recently appointed Wardell-Ghirarduzzi to the San Francisco Library Commission.

USF school counseling students are leading the charge to increase college enrollment among San Francisco students from low-income and immigrant families by providing free counseling in public high schools.

In May, USF nursing students traveled to one of the poorest regions in the country and set up pop-up health clinics to treat local residents who couldn’t afford to see a physician. Children as young as 4 years old, their parents and family members, along with many of the community’s homeless lined up by the hundreds.

The 1951 Dons is arguably one of the best college football teams of all time. They had a perfect season — nine wins, no losses, no ties — and the players were so talented, the National Football League drafted nine of them and named three to its Hall of Fame, a record for one college team.

Like most USF students, Marisela Esparza’s service-learning experience started by volunteering for a cause. Unlike most, it ended with her helping to organize a strike to win higher wages for thousands of San Francisco hotel workers. What began as a class requirement became a calling.

Law student Alyssa Bussey ’14 has worked as an extern for California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye since January, working on petitions for review, observing oral arguments, analyzing draft opinions, performing research assignments, and even contributing to a draft opinion.

Barbara Demman ’98 is leading
a pioneering effort to train Ghanaian nurses in emergency medicine so they can open
desperately needed hospital emergency departments and rural clinics throughout
the nation.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and award-winning legal author
Bryan A. Garner told USF law students exactly what to do if they want to
persuade a judge: avoid jargon, understand the weaknesses of their case, and
use only their strongest arguments.

ESPN aired the incredible true story of the USF football team’s stand against injustice and racism in 1951. When the players were asked to leave the team’s two African American players behind in exchange for a berth in the Orange Bowl, they refused.

U.S. Supreme
Court Justice Antonin Scalia and lawyer and author Bryan A. Garner will be on
campus for two events Jan. 31. The pair will discuss the challenges posed to legal
ethics by technology, public speaking, and money and talk about their latest
co-authored book on interpreting legal texts.

The University of San Francisco is again ranked among the top universities and colleges in the country for what it contributes to the public good in terms of academic research, community service, and support for low-income students, according to Washington Monthly magazine.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist turned immigrant rights activist Jose Antonio Vargas spoke at the University of San Francisco Sept. 27. He told an audience of about 300 that immigrant rights are the next liberation movement.

The University of San Francisco donated 151 computers to 16 schools and nonprofits this summer, as part of the university’s ongoing effort to help close the digital divide among underserved students and families.

Students at the University of San Francisco spent a week living at a wellness center for the homeless and recovering drug addicts, cooking for them and listening to the intimate details of their lives in support groups and addiction recovery meetings — an experience that brought home the realities faced by marginalized populations and dispelled previously held misconceptions.

The University of San Francisco rose to the top once again in 2013, making the President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll — an award that recognizes the university for helping to solve community problems and for placing students on a lifelong path of civic engagement.